c ° " ■= » -S-^ 




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V 




OPINIONS OF EDUCATORS 

ON THE 

VALUE AND TOTAL INFLUENCE 

OF 

INTER-COLLEGIATE AND INTER-SCHOLASTIC 

AMERICAN FOOTBALL 

AS PLAYED IN 1903-1909. 























Compiled by C; M. Woodward. 



INTER-COLLEGIATE AND INTER-SCHOLASTIC 

AMERICAN FOOTBALL 



• - 



G!F7 

MRS. WOODRO'.V.WiLSOK 



INTRODUCTOEY NOTE. 



The purpose of this compilation is to bring before 
patrons and Boards of Control of our universities, col- 
leges, and secondary schools, the magnitude of the foot- 
ball interest and the serious injury it inflicts upon the 
character and work of the great student body. It is high 
time that men of influence in educational matters get to- 
gether and put an end to the evils of public gladiatorial 
combats, corrupting gate receipts, professional coaches, 
and the frenzy for man-handling contests in which the 
combatants are under the spell of a stern necessity of 
winning at any cost. 

My own paper, the first in the series given here, was 
called forth in connection with a resolution offered by 
Dr. William Taussig in the St. Louis Board of Education 
and duly adopted last November. The resolution asked 
the Superintendent of Instruction and his assistants to 
investigate, and at their convenience report to the Board 
their views as to the proper policy of the Board in regard 
to interscholastic football. 

In response to my Estimate,'^ which I sent widely to 
educational friends, I received so much valuable material 
that I was unwilling to let it lie unpublished. Accord- 
ingly, I decided to supplement what I had written by ex- 
tracts from Annual Reports, Comndittee Records, Maga- 
zines, etc., and to publish them to the world. 

It is suggested that administrative officers and Boards 
of Control take resolute action. It is my deliberate opin- 
ion that it is vastly better to have no inter-institutional 
athletics than to retain and support a game which has so 
little to recommend it, and so much to condemn it. 

It seems to have been abundantly proved that in a pub- 
lic contest, planned and directed by professionals whose 

3 



4 



reputation is at stake, tlie standards of thought, speech,* 
and action, much too often, if not invariably, sink to the 
lowest level. 

The views and opinions which follow are from men 
who know what they are writing abont, and who have the 
courage of their convictions. 

Though a member of the Faculty of Washington Uni- 
versity and a member of the Board of Education of the 
City of St. Louis, I have no authority to represent, and 
I do not claim to represent, the views of either body on 
this important matter. 

Calvin M. Woodwakd. 

St. Louis, March 1, 1910. 



*P. S. I recePxtly saw in print that Professor William James of Har- 
vard had reported, that on one occasion the Harvard coach said to his 
team as they went on the field to meet Yale, "Now, fellers, — HELL!" 

This reminds one of what General Sherman said of War, and yet it is 
several degrees less strong than the language used by one of the 
coaches in a Missouri-Kansas game last fall, as reported to me. 

C. M. W. 



THE HARMFUL INFLUENCE OF INTER- 
SCHOLASTIC AND INTERCOLLEGIATE 
FOOTBALL AS ORGANIZED AND 
PLAYED. 

In answer to a request in December, 1909, I replied as 
follows : 

I gladly give, with some detail, the conclusions I have 
reached as to the propriety of our continuing to approve 
and support football as now played. My long experience 
as teacher of boys and young men, and my service as a 
school and college officer have given me abundant oppor- 
tunity to observe the evolution of what we have now on 
our hands, and to detect its character and influence. I 
therefore consider it my duty to respond fully and 
frankly. 

GOOD POINTS IN THE GAME. 

I am a firm believer in the value and necessity of phys- 
ical training with indoor and outdoor games for boys and 
young men. I think every boy and young man is en- 
titled to them, and school officers and parents should so 
co-operate as to secure to every growing lad an equal 
opportunity for all that is good in rational and whole- 
some games, and he should receive proper protection 
from all that is bad. I freely admit that there are some 
good points in the discipline and practice of football 
play. Alertness, agility, hardihood and the intelligent 
co-operation needed in team work are good things, and 
if there were not other things in the game which are not 
good, and if every boy could take his turn long enough 
to get the good things and under such conditions that he 
would miss the bad things, I should as heartily approve 
as I now condemn. 

It is my firm conviction that inter scholastic and inter- 
collegiate football as now conducted is neither just nor 
rational, nor is it morally wholesome either to the players 
or to the student body. 

5 



6 



Calvin M. Woodward. 



ITS INJUSTICE. 

1. The coaching, practicing and playing of a picked 
team stands in the way of general athletics. Only a 
small minority of the student body participates in such 
games with sufficient regularity to reap the benefit which 
may come to the steady player. Not 10 per cent of the 
students play on a large school or college team long 
enough to get the good things I have named ; on the con- 
trary, a few picked boys or men dominate everything for 
three months every year. 

Every regular member of the "team" represents from 
twenty to fifty boys who do not play at all, or only enough 
to be proved worthless for winning games and hence are 
rejected, though they may have the greatest need of ra- 
tional training. The smuggling into the team of "ring- 
ers" and "ineligibles" is less frequent now than for- 
merly, but I wish to call attention to the fact that every 
time an "ineligible" goes in an "eligible" goes out. I 
have known teams of so-called college players in which 
nearly every man was "ineligible," yet those ringers or 
favored drones got all the "fine physical, mental and 
moral benefits" named above, while the legitimate, bona 
fide students got little or none of them. No, it is a mis- 
nomer to call today's public football a feature of general 
physical culture. 

MORAL EFFECT IS BAD UPON THE PLAYERS 
THEMSELVES. 

2. The moral effect upon the players is bad, rather than 
good. I do not refer to intentional roughness and bru- 
tality in play; but I refer to the general moral atmos- 
phere surrounding a team. Of course, there are good 
students and incorruptible men who play football, but it 
cannot be denied that they are exposed to bad influences. 
I am speaking of teams as they come and go, and I have 
seen scores of them, and I have noted the atmosphere that 
generally surrounds them. 

Much too often the team is itself loud, rude, ill-man- 
nered and disorderly. Of course, there are exceptions, 



The Demomlizing Influence. 



7 



but as a rule a school or college team when on the street, 
in the cars, at the theater or in the corridors of a school 
or college building makes itself seen, heard and felt. Dr. 
Andrew Draper, ex-president of the University of Illi- 
nois, says : 

^ ' Five or six years ago I had occasion to leave my home 
early on the morning after Thanksgiving to meet an 
engagement at a teachers^ association. On the way the 
football team from one of the central and conspicuous 
high schools of the country who had been out to play a 
Thanksgiving game, came into the car on their way home. 
They had been victorious, and their conduct was beyond 
description. Boys of the high school age, who mani- 
festly lived in respectable homes, seemed to think it 
manly to indulge in profanity and obscenity with a famil- 
iarity which was shocking. They passed a bottle of 
liquor from one to another, and when the train stopped 
went out to have it refilled. The conditions were appall- 
ing and most suggestive.'' 

The reasons for such exhibitions at home and else- 
where are not far to seek. They are, first, the com- 
panionship and example of professional sports and loaf- 
ers, who crowd about a team when on the field and after 
a game; second, the habit of playing to a gallery and 
working for applause; third, the feeling that, by virtue 
of their winning fame and '^big money,'' they are privi- 
leged to break the laws of decency and good order 
with impunity. Eefined and well-bred members of a 
team are often made to feel ashamed of their associates. 

THE DEMORALIZATION OF THE WHOLE 
STUDENT BODY. 

3. The moral effect upon the student body is often very 
bad. The great bulk of the student body, whose only 
participation in football consists in giving the team moral 
and financial support, too often becomes indifferent to 
f the rules for fair play and true refinement, and at times 

seems to lose all sense of propriety. The high schools 
ape the manners of the colleges, and, if we are to believe 



8 



Calvin M. Woodward. 



what the daily papers tell us of the behavior of college 
boys in New York City, at Urbana, 111.; at Iowa City 
and elsewhere, after a game, we must conclude that the 
spectacle of the game and the lawless spirit of sporting 
auxiliaries have been known to convert the body of stu- 
dents into a mob of rioters. I have known bodies of 
students who rose in rebellion because ineligible star 
players were not allowed to play. 

I recall an instance of demoralization which is very 
significant. It is the case of a visiting college team 
which brought to St. Louis a ^'ringer,'' who was not a 
student at all, but who was a star player. The managers 
presented the names of a team of eligible players, and 
then deliberately presented the '^ringer,'' who assumed 
one of the names. The ^^ame was played, and the team 
went home with the fraud undetected, yet every man on 
the visiting team, and every representative of the college 
from which they came must have known of the fraud, and 
consented to it. I am told that such cases are not rare — 
yet what moral degradation does such a case reveal ! 

As to betting, President Draper says 'Hhat he once 
sat in a hotel lobby before a great game, and saw scores 
of boys from two leading American universities daring- 
each other to put up money on their respective teams, and 
when the dare was accepted and the terms settled, as fre- 
quently happened, they placed their money in envelopes, 
which they gave to the clerk of the house, to be delivered 
to the winner after the game. The thing could hardly 
have been worse. ^ ' 

RISK OF LIFE AND LIMB. 

4. There can be no question as to the risk of life and 
limb incurred in the game as now played. Parents of 
strong, manly boys very generally disapprove of the 
game, and, if they reluctantly consent to their sons ' play- 
ing, they cannot bear to see them play. There may be 
occasionally a Eoman or a Spartan mother who will say 
to her son when she sends him into a typical game: 
' ' Come home with a crown of victory on your head, or on 
a stretcher with your neck broken.^' But such cases 
are rare. 



Many Peoph Love to See a Fight. 



9 



Often a strong and active boy who does not approve of 
rough games, and who does not need its training, is 
forced into a team by a strong public sentiment which 
declares it is his ''duty" to play. He has no desire to 
cripple an opponent or to be crippled by one. For him 
the game is not worth what it may cost, but he has not 
the courage to say "No." To be called a ''mollycoddle" 
or a "sissy-boy" often has more terrors for him than a 
tribe of Indians. 

For a sacred principle, for one's country, or one's fam- 
ily, or for the supremacy of law, one may face danger 
with his life in his hand ; but there is no adequate excuse 
for permitting our sons, or the sons of others, to risk 
life and limb in a brutal game. 

EXHIBITION GAMES NOT NECESSARY. 

There is no lack of interesting and wholesome field 
sports in which all students may join. The propriety of 
retaining and encouraging football, as now played, is not 
to be determined by a vote of those who are merely spec- 
tators of games. There is always a considerable num- 
ber of people who "like to see a good game;" who see 
nothing objectionable in a good fight, and hence they ap- 
prove of the game as they would approve of a Spanish 
bull fight, or a gladiatorial contest in a Eoman arena. 
Such people have no idea of the total moral influence of 
such brutalizing sport. 

I believe that the enthusiasm aroused by public foot- 
ball is altogether mischievous; it puts the emphasis in 
the wrong place ; it overshadows vastly greater interests, 
and minimizes activities of far higher merit. Broken 
bones and shattered lives are not its greatest evil. The 
lowering of moral standards; the substitution of the 
rowdy and the sport for the gentleman and scholar, are 
stupendous evils far more widespread and infinitely more 
serious. If athletic contests of whatever sort between 
colleges and schools cannot be made morally and educa- 
tionally harmless they should be abolished. 

Calvin Milton Woodwaed. 
St. Louis, January, 1910. 



10 



Side Lights from Harvard. 



VIEWS FROM HARVARD. 

The Editor of the "Harvard Advocate" (February 21, 
1890) said: 

"There is an element of the ridiculous, to speak as charitably as 
possible, in the fact that over thirty thousand dollars were spent by us 
in one year to maintain a few athletic teams with positive benefit to 
only a few men." 

Coach W. T. Eeid, Jr., June, 1905, speaking of the 
"material on hand" for football, says: 

"Much of the material has become ineligible through failure of vari- 
ous individuals comprising it to maintain satisfactory standards of 
scholarship and morals.'' 

Again, speaking of the ' ' big men ' ' who have been seen 
out practicing, he says : ' ' Some of the men are too beefy 
to use — others have impossible (!) temperaments, while 
others still are very susceptible to injury. . . . The 
idea that beef alone makes a football player is all wrong. 
The beef must be active, teachable, and intelligent." 

Mr. Eeid advocates steady coaching by a steady coach , 
for a ' ' college generation, " i. e., four years. And yet the 
Committee on Athletic Sports, September 30, 1903, re- 
ported: "It is unfortunate that the game should be 
regulated and directed so entirely by coaches whose 
point of view is strategy." 

In February, 1906, the Faculty took the ground that 
football as played was thoroughly bad and ought to be 
stopped absolutely and finally. 

The Committee of the Board of Overseers reported that 
"the game of football as at present played was essentially 
bad in every respect." 

In his report for 1904-5, the Chairman of the Athletic 
Committee, Mr. A. C. Coolidge, said: 

"The spirit of the best kind of amateur — that of sport for sport's 
sake — inevitably suffers under a system where each team is made up of 
the obedient tools of a highly paid professional. Under such a system, 
contests tend to degenerate into the triumph of this or that coach. The 
Committee are also convinced that the paying of great sums of money 



President Charles W. Eliot. 



11 



to men who instruct our youths in what should be, not their work, 
but their play, tends to vitiate the opinion not only of the student body, 
but of the whole community, as to what is of real importance in a col- 
lege training and in the education of a young man." 

Then follows the remarkable confession: 

"At the same time, neither Harvard nor any other institution is in 
a position as yet, to grapple boldly with the evil." 

In a minority report of the Athletic Committee^ in favor 
of the abolition of intercollegiate football at Harvard, Mr. 
Morefield Storey said (February 27, 1907) : 

"Of late years the successful athlete has eclipsed all other college 
heroes, and it is difficult for students in these conditions not to get a 
very distorted view of what life is really worth. The intellectual side 
of college, life cannot fail to suffer when success in athletics is regarded 
of so much importance." 



FROM BH. CHARLES W, ELIOT, EX-PRESIDEXT OF HARVARD 

UNIVERSITY. 

Dr. Eliot's opinions on all matters connected with the 
education of young men have, and ought to have, great 
weight with parents and educational officers. He has 
always been a keen observer, a kind and friendly critic, 
a just judge, a noble and fearless man. I therefore c^uote 
him freely. Under date of February 9, 1910, he writes : 

Ever since football became a popular sport in colleges and high 
schools I have been protesting against it. For your present purpose 
you might perhaps make a series of quotations from my published 
reports as President of Harvard University. I dealt with the subject 
in many of those reports, describing plainly its moral and physical 
evils. I still believe those descriptions to have been correct, and so 
far as my comments on the game had a prophetic character they have 
been fully justified by the actual result. ! think a short collection of 
my remarks on football while I was President of Harvard University 
would serve your present purpose better than any letter from me now 
that I have retired. 



FROM PRESIDENT ELIOT'S REPORT FOR 1903-04. AN ABSTRACT. 

The game of football has become seriously injurious 
to rational academic life in American schools and col- 
leges, and it is time that the public, especially the edu- 
cated public, should understand and take into earnest 
consideration the objections to this game. 



12 The Lesser Evils and the Greatest One, 



Some of tlie lesser objections to the game are: 

1. Its extreme publicity; 

2. The large proportion of injuries among the players ; 

3. The absorption of the undergraduate mind in the 
subject for two months; 

4. The disproportionate exaltation of the football hero 
in the college world. The football hero is useful in a 
society of young men, if he illustrates generous strength 
and leads a clean life; hut his merits of body and mind 
are not of the most promising sort for future service 
out in the world. 

5. The state of mutual distrust and hostility between 
colleges which all too frequently football creates is an- 
other of these lesser evils. 

6. The enfeebling theory that no team can do its best 
except in the presence of hosts of applauding friends is 
still another of the lesser evils of football. Worse 
preparation for the real struggles and contests of life 
can hardly be imagined. 

7. None of these things, however, enter into the main 
objection to the game, for the main objection lies against 
its moral quality. 

The common justification offered for these hateful conditions of the 
game is that football is a fight; and that its strategy and ethics are 
those of war. One may therefore resort in football to every ruse, strat- 
agem, and deceit, which would be justifiable in actual fighting. 

These rules of action are all justifiable, and even necessary, in the 
consummate savagery called war, in which the immediate object is to 
kill and disable as many of the enemy as possible. To surprise, 
ambuscade, and deceive the enemy, and invariably to overwhelm a 
smaller force by a greater one, are the expected methods of war. But 
there is no justification for such methods in a manly game or sport 
between friends. They are essentially ungenerous, and no sport is 
wholesome in which ungenerous and mean acts, which easily escape 
detection, contribute to victory, whether such acts be occasional and 
incidental, or habitual. 

The essential thing for university youth to learn is the difference 
between practicing generously a liberal art, and driving a trade or win- 
ning a fight, no matter how. Civilization has been long in possession of 
much higher ethics than those of war, and experience has abundantly 
proved that the highest efficiency for service and the finest sort of cour- 
age in individual men may be accompanied by, and indeed spring from, 
unvarying generosity, gentleness, and good will. 



Df. Eliot's Report. 



13 



FROM DR. ELIOT'S REPORT OF 1904-05 ON FOOTBALL, GIVEN 

ENTIRE. 

The American game of football as now played is wholly unfit for 
colleges and schools. 

(1) It causes an unreasonable number of serious injuries and 
deaths; not one in five of the men that play football several seasons 
escapes without injury properly called serious, and of the twenty to 
thirty picked players who play hard throughout a season hardly a- 
man escapes serious injury. The public has been kept ignorant con- 
cerning the number and gravity of these injuries, the prevailing prac- 
tice among coaches and players having been to conceal or make light 
of the injuries sustained. Many of the serious injuries are of such a 
nature — sprains, strains, wrenches, dislocations, ruptures of ligaments 
and muscles, and shocks to the brain — -that in all probability they can 
never be perfectly repaired. 

(2) Violations of the rules of the game by coaches, trainers, and 
players are highly profitable, and are constantly perpetrated by all 
parties. 

(3) In any hard-fought game many of the actions of the players are 
invisible to the spectators, and even to the referee and umpire; hence 
much profitable foul play escapes notice. 

(4) The game offers many opportunities for several players to com- 
bine in violently attacking one player. 

(5) There is no such thing as generosity between combatants, any 
more than there is in war. 

(6) Acts of brutality are constantly committed, partly as results of 
the passions naturally roused in fighting, but often on well-grounded 
calculations of profit towards victory. 

(7) As a spectacle, for persons who know what the game really is, 
football is more brutalizing than prize-fighting, cock-fighting, or bull- 
fighting. Regarded as a combat between highly trained men, the prize- 
ring has great advantages over the football field; for the rules of the 
prize-ring are more humane than those of football, and they can be, 
and often are, strictly enforced. The fight in a prize-ring between two 
men facing each other is perfectly visible, so that there are no secret 
abominations as in football. Yet prize-fighting is illegal. 

(8) The game sets up a wrong kind of hero — the man who uses his 
strength brutally, with a reckless disregard both of the injuries he may 
suffer and of the injuries he may inflict on others. That is not the best 
kind of courage or the best kind of hero. The courage which educated 
people ought to admire is not that reckless, unmotived courage, but the 
courage that risks life or limb to help or save others, or that risks 
popular condemnation in speaking the truth, or in espousing the cause 
of the weak or the maligned. 



14 



r/zf VerdAci of Col Moshy. 



All these evils of football have novr descended from the colleges into 
the bccondary schools, vrhere they are vorklng great moral mischief, 
It is clearly the duty of the colleges, vhlch have permi::ed these mon- 
strous evils to grovr up and to become intense, to purge themselves of 
such immoralities, and to do vrhat they cai: ro help the seiondary 
schools to purge themselves also. Inter :ohegi^-:e aui iu:er;:holastic 
football ought to be prohibited until a rer.scu:;. he irme hr; rerU formu- 
lated and thoroughly exemplified in the pra;:i;e o: ini^:v-:uf,: lustitu- 
tions. It is childish to suppose that the athletic authorities v-hi:h have 
permitted football to become a brutal, cheating, demoralizing g5.me can 
be trusted to reform it. CsAnnzs TV. Euoi. 'oS. 



COLONEL .J, S. AiOSBY. A GRADUATE OF THE UXrv'ERSITY OF 
TIRGIXIA, CONFEDERATE SOLDIER. NOW L'NITED STATES 
LAND COMMISSIONER. SAID LAST NOT'EMBER: 

'T have read vith indignation mingled vriih great sorro— the acco'unt 
of the murder of young Christian, a student of the University of Vir- 
ginia, in a football game in Vv'ashingion vrith Georgetovrn University, I 
use the vrord 'murder" advisedly, The killing v-as not an accident. The 
very fact that a university surgeon vent vhth the team shov-s that they 
were going to var. They neglected, however, to provide an ambulance 
to carry on the vrounded. 

"T hope if this barbarous amusement is continued the ::o5.rd of vis- 
itors vrill reouire it to be conducted in accordance vriih the reguiahons 
of modern vrar. Some years ago I expressed to Dr, E. A, Alderman, 
president of the university, my objection to football because it vas not 
a recreation for students: because many -.ere mahing it a profession; 
because it developed the brutal instinjts o: our nature, and 'ce cause it 
should be no part of the curriculum of the tmiversity, vhich it novr is. 

"iMr. Alderman says that there is great danger to life and limb in 
fQotball. and that the danger must 'le eliminated before it is played 
any more. But if the danger is eliminated nothing vrih be left of the 
game. The danger is not only the chief but the only attraction to the 
mob that gathers to vritness it. Without it there vrill be no rooters 
to cheer the combatants and no heroes vrith brohen limbs and bloody 
noses. 

'The shouts in the Coliseum over the dying gladiator, '"butchered to 
make a Roman holiday.' have for years echoed through the arcades of 
the university." 

'The defenders of such sport say it develops the ruunhc: i o: yourh, 
I deny it, unless by manhood they mean physical srrength, IVy idea 
of manhood is a sense of honor and courage: such cjualities may exist 
in a weak body. The difference between our ideals is the distance 
between Stonewall Jackson and .John L. Sullivan. Football simply 
develops the brute dormant in man's nature and puts the player on a 
level with an Eskimo or a polar bear. 



A Regent of a University Speaks. 



15 



FROM MR. J. W. GLEED, OF TOPEKA, REGENT OF THE UNIVER- 
SITY OF KANSAS, UNDER DATE OF JANUARY 28, 1910. 

This analysis of the football situation is so clear and 
strong that I give it entire : 

INTEECOLLEGIATE FOOTBALL. 

"Inter-collegiate football means a series of fierce, ultra-strenuous, 
physical contests, in various public arenas, for the amusement of large 
miscellaneous audiences, who pay money to witness a highly exciting 
spectacle. 

"When a football man enters college in September, he sees before him 
a series of such public exhibitions; the most important scheduled at 
Kansas City before thirty thousand people on Thanksgiving day. He 
hears in advance the plaudits of vast multitudes; he sees his name in 
the paper day after day; he anticipates the sweets of final triumph, the 
congratulations at home, and permanent distinction and admiration 
among the student body. He is taught to think that upon him hangs 
the good name and glory of his college. 

LIFE AISTD LIMB DISREGASDED. 

"Such publicity, such applause, such glory, constitute tremendous 
prizes. It would be a strange 18-year-old boy who would not lay down 
his life to win them. At any rate with such rewards before him — with 
such responsibilities upon him — can anything during September, Octo- 
ber and November seem important except football?" 

"And when the great day comes, can anything seem important except 
that his side win? Suppose there is danger that if he plays today that 
injured ankle may be permanently ruined; can he stay out? Certainly 
not. There is the glory of the college, the glory of his fellow players, 
his own glory at stake. 

"The actual play being on, what determination animates him? The 
determination to do thus and so absolutely without regard to the life 
and limb of his opponent; subject of course to the rules; — so that noth- 
ing be lost by a foul. Subject to the rules, the will, the passion, which 
must animate him, are the will and passioh v/hich animated the war- 
rior of past centuries, when war was a hand to hand struggle. 

BEUTE INSTINCTS AROUSED. 

"If he, the young gladiator, is heavy enough, is strong enough, the 
back of the desperate boy on the other side may be broken, may be 
broken by him — the young gladiator; but if so, so it must be. The 
ball must be advanced, thus and so, regardless of consequences. 

"Your nice, good-natured son, my dear madame, of course does not 
go into a game with murder in his heart. But suppose he loses a point 
by reason of a foul on the other side, a palpable, contemptible foul, not 



16 



Mr. J. W. Gleed. 



seen by the umpire — what is iiov^f the feeling in his heart? Is it possi- 
ble for men to engage in fierce hand to hand physical struggle without 
arousing the smashing and destroying instinct which comes down to 
us from our animal ancestors? 

"How is the game less brutal than prize-fighting? The percent of 
deaths or permanent injuries is less in prize fighting, and the game 
is the same in both cases — to accomplish certain physical results 
against physical opposition, 

what's in it for the PLAYERf 

"And what does the player get out of it? Health and strength? He 
had health and strength to begin with, or he never would have been 
on the team. Health and strength? No physical trainer ever recom- 
mended football as the best preparation for a long life and permanent 
health and strength. 

"Go to a great game and watch the defeated team stagger in after 
"all is lost"; watch them as they drop on the ground, every atom of 
muscular and nervous self-control gone, the whole man, physical and 
mental, absolutely gone — completely and utterly exhausted; watch the 
boy as he drops, a quivering, moaning heap; hear him cry and sob, and 
say, then; if you think he is promoting health and strength. 

"His wretched ankle may get well; it may not. That blow on the 
head may never trouble him; it may lead to insanity. But such 
complete and overwhelming physical and nervous exhaustion must have 
permanently evil results. 

"What good does the player get out of it? It is absurd to say that he 
does not neglect his studies. He may earn a passing grade, or he may 
get a passing grade w^ithout earning it; but the bulk of his time, 
determination, will and nerve power during three months goes to foot- 
ball and cannot go to his studies. 

football's false ideal. 

"Under the ordinary circumstances football cannot be to him either 
play, amusement or recreation; it is work and work only; and men 
can't do two days' work in one day. 

"Colleges are institutions for the cultivation of mind and soul, and 
of bodies, so far as they serve mind and soul. A sound mind in a sound 
body; but the body for the sake of the mind. The aim of colleges is to 
turn out President Eliots, and not Jack Johnsons. It may be colleges 
are a mistake — that what we need is men of whom Johnsons and 
Jeffries are the supreme type — not men of whom Eliot is the type. If 
that is so, abolish the colleges. If that is not so, keep the college an 
intellectual institution. 

"Inter-collegiate football puts the emphasis on the wrong thing; 
holds up a false ideal. It exalts force; God is with the big guns; force 
is the thing — power; who cares for scholarship, for truth, for wisdom, 
or for righteousness? 



What the Surgeons Report. 



17 



DO PARENTS WANT THE GAMEf 

"An industrious student has come to be looked upon with contempt 
by a large body of the students. Thirty years ago scholarship com- 
manded respect and won honor; now apparently the prizes are all to 
the strong, the heavy, the swift of body. 

"Athletics? Yes; particularly for those who need athletics; but foot- 
ball picks those who are already strong, and discourages, rather than 
encourages, the weak. 

"Do the taxpayers of Kansas want their money spent to train gladi- 
ators for public exhibitions? My judgment is that they do not. 

"Do the parents of Kansas want their sons trained as physical gladi- 
ators for public exhibitions? My judgment is that they do not. 

"Do the parents or the taxpayers like these exciting public exhibi- 
tions with their attendant evils of betting and drunkenness? My judg- 
ment is that they do not." 



PHYSICAL INJURIES AT HARVARD IN THE FALL OP 1905. 

Of the Harvard University Squad" not including 
Freshmen, the total number of injuries of great or 
moderate severity (practically all of which were suffi- 
cient to keep men out of play) was one hundred and 
forty-five. This does not include the infinity of minor 
injuries which constantly came under observation of the 
two regular surgeons, Dr. E. H. Nichols and Dr. H. B. 
Smith, who had charge of the football squad from Sep- 
tember 12 to November 25, 1905. In their report, the 
injuries are classified, for example: 

"Head injuries, nineteen. Cases of concussion were frequent, both 
during practice and games, in fact, but two games were played during 
the entire season in which a case of concussion of the brain did not 
occur." 

These gentlemen tell us that players generally mini- 
mize their injuries. After full discussion they reach con- 
clusions as follows: 

1. The number, severity, and permanence of the in- 
juries received in playing football are very much greater 
than generally is credited or believed. 

2. The percentage of injuries is incomparably greater 
in football than in any other of the major sports. 



18 What the New York Nation Says. 

3. The game does not develop the best type of men 
physically, because too great prominence is given to 
weight without corresponding nervous energy. 

4. The percentage of injury is much too great for any 
mere sport. 

The Committee of the Board of Overseers reported 
that ''The game of football as at present played was 
essentially bad in every respect.'' 



FROM THE "NATION," OF NEW YORK. 

In an address given at the Harvard Medical School 
last year and quoted in the ''Nation," May 20, 1909, Dr. 
Nichols, himself an ex-Harvard athlete, distinctly took 
ground in opjDosition: 

To "Coaches, professional and graduate;" 

To "Gate-Eeceipts;" 

To "Offensive Hippodrome features of Inter-Univer- 
sity contests." 
And the editor of the "Nation" adds: 

"Public opinion is rapidly coming to the point where it will insist 
upon the use of the surgeon's knife upon these extraneous athletic 
growths. The sooner this is done, the better for education." 

On December 10, 1908.— The editor of the "Nation" 
sums up the reported injuries of the season as tivelve dead 
and three hundred and fifty hurt in football contests, 
largely in High schools and Normal schools. Neverthe- 
less, "the strongest arguments against intercollegiate and 
interscholastic contests are not found in the casualty list, 
but in the demoralization and false emphasis." 

FROM ROBERT E. SPEER, A PRINCETON GRADUATE. 
The last weeks of every football season are critical weeks in the 
lives of many young men in the colleges and preparatory schools of 
this country. Seed is sown then which will yield a baleful harvest. 
Years hence some men v/ould give thousands of dollars to undo what 
is done during these days. On the surface these days are distin- 
guished from other seasons of the school and college year only by 
the fact that the great football games are played then and the ques- 
tion of supremacy decided. But beneath the surface they are marked 



Football is Not Physical Culture. 



19 



as the same weeks are marked every year by the sowing of acts 
from which men will reap habits and characters and destinies. Thou- 
sands of dollars are bet on the issue of these games. Men who never 
gambled before stake their own or their fathers' money on their 
favorite college. — [From "A Young Man's Questions."] 



FROM MR. GEORGE F. FISKE, A BUSINESS MAN OF ST. LOUIS. 
WHO WANTS THE GAME ABOLISHED. 

"I believe you have the right view of the matter. As a parent who has 
sons to send to college, I should be glad to see football as at present 
conducted abolished. As a business man, I believe the influence of 
such contests, physically, morally, and intellectually, is of decided dis- 
advantage to the student and the community, and wrong notions of the 
values of life are encouraged. 

"If this abuse of sport is allowed to prevail unchecked, I think many 
business men will begin to doubt the value of a college education as a 
preparation for business life, and will make their influence felt against 
it. As a college man, I deplore this." 



FROM DR. SARGENT, DIRECTOR OF HEMENWAY GYMNASIUM, 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 

"I fully agree with your statement in regard to the demoralizing 
effects of gladiatorial contests and large gate receipts." 



VIEWS OF AN ADVOCATE OF RATIONAL PHYSICAL TRAINING, 
AND A TEACHER OF IT FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS. 

Mr. A. E. Kindervater, Director of Physical Training 
in the St. Louis public schools, writes that he finds my 

"arguments so true, to the point, and in accord with my knowledge of 
the game, that I can not help but thank you sincerely for the stand 
taken against this game, v/hich in reality is not a game, but a brutal 
contest under the present rules." 



FROM PRINCIPALS OF LARGE SECONDARY 
SCHOOLS. 

FROM W. M. BUTLER, PRINCIPAL OF THE YEATMAN HIGH 
SCHOOL, ST. LOUIS. 

"I think that all school men who have given the game serious 
thought must concur in the charges which you lay at the door of the 
game. Surely, no one influence in school and college life has d07ie as 
much injury in recent years." 



20 



Principal Gilbert B. Morrison. 



FROM GILBERT B. MORRISON, PRINCIPAL OF THE McKINLEY 
HIGH SCHOOL OF ST. LOUIS. 

IXTEBSCHOLASTIC FOOTBALL. 

The good points of ttie game of football have often been pointed out. 
It certainly requires physical courage, alertness, -self-control, and a 
vigorous exercise of the will. Played on the home field betvs-een classes 
or clubs of the same school and under the sole control of one principal 
and one corps of teachers, I believe that the possibilities of the game 
for development might be realized. As a matter of fact it is being 
realized in several schools* that could be mentioned. Thus limited it 
can be held under control and adapted and conditioned to the ^school's 
ideals and be made to serve educational ends. 

On the home field where the "honor of the schooF' is not at stake 
the game, while strenuous, is more in the nature of sport, and does not 
end with that fierce, uncontrolled exaltation of the victors, and that 
depressed lamentation of woe of the -vanquished that is always, con- 
spicuous in an interscholastic t)attle. Matches between boys of nea,rly 
equal weight can be arranged in the same school, and the danger of 
injury minimized. 

But it is in mterscliolastic contests that the evils of football may b^ 
pointed out: ^ 

(1) In interscliolastic games there is a prevailing fallacy that the 
honor of the school is at stake. The idea tfiat a school can be seriously 
affected one way or the other by the result of a game would be a con- 
fession that the school is a failure as an educational institution and 
has no standing in its own right. The sentiment that prevails among 
the boys and some teachers that the school is in need of a victory to 
improve its standing certainly borders on the ridiculous. 

(2) The contests l)etween schools partake of the nature of war and 
not of the nature of sport. The preparation for an important game on 
the practice field is a grim, joyless performance. The boys, with set, 
drawn faces, are urged and whipped into line by the coach, whose 
expression might be likened to that of a groom trying to drive horses 
from a burning stable. There is little fun or real sport about it, but a 
dogged and persistent preparation for vrar. That an interscholastic 
contest is not in the nature of sport was well evidenced in a recent 
conversation I had with a young friend of mine after he had finished 
a hard game in which he had received several hard bruises: "I sup- 
pose," I remarked, "that you boys get lots of fun out of these games 
whether you win or lose." "Don't you believe it," said he, "if it were 

*Conspicuous among such schools are St. Paul Academj', of Concord, 
N. H., and the Manual Training High School of Kansas City, Mo., 
v.-hich have gained rather than lost in popularity by prohibiting inter- 
scholastic football. American football is forbidden between the high 
schools of Nev\' York City; they plaj' Soccer ball instead. 



Vndesimhle School Spirit. 



21 



not for the honor of the school, do you suppose I would volunteer to 
take such punishment? Not on your life." He had won for his school, 
and he felt paid for his hard work, but he would not confess to the fun. 

(3) The feeling engendered is often one of malevolence rather than 
one of benevolence. With so much at stake and with the belief that the 
"honor" of the school must be won, this can not help but be the feeling. 
The signals are given in secret, and every visitor is looked upon sus- 
piciously as a possible spy from the camp of the enemy. Sharp and 
unsportsmanlike practices are common, and each side regards the 
other as capable of anything to gain an advantage. "Anything to win," 
is generally the watchword. 

(4) The temptations to which the man who trains the team is sub- 
jected are too great for the average coach. Say what we may to a coach 
about his work being for the development and sportsmanship of the 
boys and not for victory, the fact remains that under prevailing condi- 
ditons his reputation really depends on victory, and he knows it. 
Nothing need be said about the professional coach whose infi'iience on 
the boys is always bad. But the teacher-coach is not more than human, 
and, try as he may to hold to his ideals, it takes a very exceptional 
man who will sacrifice his reputation for a fine point in ethics. I 
believe there are such men, but they are few and far between. 

(5) The interest in interscholastic games, especially between the two 
schools playing for the championship, is too intense for ivholesome 
educational purposes. This interest often passes all reasonable bounds, 
and affects the whole school greatly to the detriment of the studies. 
The week preceding the final game is all excitement. It absorbs 
nearly the whole interest in the school, and little else is talked about, 
and even betting is not infrequent. The partizanship and "school 
spirit" displayed at the game by the pupils of the rival schools are 
extreme and unwholesome, and often break out in expressions of posi- 
tive malevolence. Even the girls share in these exhibitions of hys- 
terical enthusiasm. At a recent game between two leading high 
schools I overheard the following conversation about a boy who was 
being carried off the field unconscious from an injury: 

Young Lady: "Oh, who is hurt? One of our boys?" "No," replied 
her escort, "it is one of the boys," naming the other school. 

Young Lady: "Oh, goody! goody!" as she clapped her hands for joy. 
The womanly, humanitarian instincts had ' for the moment become 
totally inhibited by a blind, brutal desire for the victory of her school. 
That the boy who had fallen in battling for his school might be dying 
or crippled for life, counted for nothing against a temporary advantage 
which his mishap gave to the rival team. 

As to the players themselves after the game, we have seen in the 
dressing rooms the frantic demonstrations of joy and exaltation by the 
winners, even though the victory may have been decided on a single 
disputed point only; and at the same time in an adjoining room we 
have witnessed the weeping and wailing and lamentations of the 
losers resulting from the nervous reaction following an excessive strain 
and the crushing consciousness of defeat. The teams may be, and 



22 



Dr. Albert Shaw. 



often are, of equal merit and deserving of equal praise, but one leaves 
ttie field pjiffed up with fictitious exaltation, while the other slinks 
away with a degradation equally fictitious. 

(6) In the interscholastic league it is impossi'ble for a school to 
carry out its oicn ideals respecting the aims and purposes of the game. 
When the management of field athletics are taken out of the hands of 
the principal and faculty of a school and given up to an outside hoard 
or "judiciary committee" who know nothing about the merits of the 
boys, and who care for nothing except victory, it becomes impossible 
for a school to employ joofball or any other game for educational pur- 
poses. No care can be taken in matching boys of equal size and 
strength, no fixing of dates to suit individual necessities. No post- 
poning of games. Boys must play the games on schedule, dead or 
alive, fit or unfit. They are a part of an unyielding machine that 
admits of no individual adjustment to rational ends. For one, I am 
free to say that I should like to see football and other athletics con- 
find to the home field, where they could be employed as sport and 
relaxation instead of the present catering to all the methods and prac- 
tices of professionalism. 



EXTRACTS FROM AN ARTICLE ON FOOTBALL IN THE> "REVIEW 
OF REVIEWS," BY THE EDITOR, DR. ALBERT SHAW. DE- 
CEMBER, 1909. 

It is fast growing to be the opinion of thoughtful people outside of 
academic circles that the mania for sports and contests of physical 
proY/ess in our colleges and schools has gone so far that it constitutes 
an evil of great magnitude. . . . 

A natural consequence of the intensity of this feeling is the undue 
responsibiiitj" placed upon the members of the representative teams. 
The football players are made to feel that upon them chiefly depends 
the glory or the disgrace of their college. So overwhelming is this 
feeling that it becomes a veritable obsession. Members of the faculty 
and of the board of trustees and all the old graduates become infected 
with the craze. 

Women are especially susceptible to epidemic hysteria of this sort. 
Their influence is even worse than that of men in driving the players 
to that attitude of false heroism which v/ould make any of them will- 
ing and glad, not merely to break his nose or his collarbone, but to 
lay down his life on the football field. They are doing it all for the 
glory of the college and the admiring applause of the score of 
thousands of well-dressed girls on the bleachers, w^ho, all unaware to 
themselves, have become tainted v/ith that wretched passion for dan- 
gerous gladiatorial combat that takes the fair women of Spain to the 
bull-fight every Sunday afternoon. . . . 

Parents who have brought up their big, strong boy to the college 
age, and vrould like to have him become both a gentleman and a 
scholar, find that the exigencies of the college to which he is sent 



How to ''Make a FooV of a Boy. 



23 



require that he and all their plans for his life be sacrificed upon the 
altar of the institution's glory on the field of athletics. Sometimes, 
though rarely, the big football player who has been turned into a pro- 
fessional athlete, and victimized through his college course, escapes 
the permanent impairment of his health and gets out into the world 
with as good a chance as the men who have not played football. . . . 

The college presidents are wont to tell us that very few football 
players are injured, and that the game upon the whole makes for the 
physical well-being of those who play it. But the old football coaches, 
who really know the facts far better than the college presidents, will 
tell you in confidence a very different tale. . . . 

From the standpoint of the young fellov/ w^ho struggles in the mass 
plays in the presence of 40,000 bellowing and screaming spectators, the 
great climax of human life has been reached. Here is the moment of 
supreme effort. All training, from the kindergarten up, has led to the 
brutal scramble in which men's lungs are crushed and spines are 
broken; and all future life must be lived in gray lights and obscurity 
when compared with the brilliancy and grandeur of this supreme 
moment. 

It is a pathetic thing to take anybody's fine, strong boy and make a 
fool of him in this way. Parents should rise up with wrath and with 
sarcasm, and call for an end of unseemly gladiatorial contests in the 
pretended name of a friendly competition. The days of the great 
games in the vicinity of New York, as all policemen knov/, mean days 
and nights of disgraceful orgies. . . . 

This blare of vulgar publicity is, in all its reflex influences, de- 
moralizing to college life. It puts the emphasis upon wrong things and 
cheapens the right things. It involves all kinds of college athletics in 
a network of commercialism that thoroughly Tammanyizes v/hat ought 
to be decorous and fine. ... 

The game as played is also a demoralizing game because it is often 
unsportsmanlike. In a game of tennis no one thinks of taking 
advantage of an opponent by any sort of cheating. But in the great 
contests at football the one object is to win by all possible means, and 
there is always an endeavor to beat the rules. If there is a star player 
on the opposing team, there is apt to be a definite intention to "put 
him out of the game" by one means or another. 

A college president whose eyes are open to the. evils of the game 
remarked the other day concerning certain recent fatalities, that these 
men had been killed intentionally. He hastened to explain that he did 
not mean that there was any deliberate intention to produce fatal 
results, but that there was probably a purpose to injure the opponent 
sufficiently to "put him out of the game." All of this has a very ugly 
sound, and it will be bitterly denied in some academic quarters. But 
let it stand as the expression of a very experienced and able 
observer. . . . 

Among the incidental evils of the football mania in the big colleges 
may be mentioned the transmxission of the craze to the preparatory 



24 



President James B. Angell. 



schools. Many of these schools are organized simply upon the football 
basis. They press football as a means of gaining place and standing 
among the competing institutions of their class. They become fanatical 
on the subject of football, make a sort of religion out of it, and at 
length reach the point where they isolate the boy whose parents think 
it best that he should confine himself to other sports. . . . 

Let us repeat, then, that it is quite time for the parents and the 
general public to have their innings. The interscholastic games are 
carried to great excess, they interfere with school work, they injure 
health and morals, and they should at least be closely restricted. . . . 



VIEWS OF PRESIDENT JAMES B. AXGELL. 

This venerable head of Michigan University -vrrote in 
1906: 

I presume that all of you, like me, have looked with favor on the 
introdutcion of athletic games, including football, into our universities. 
In many respects they have been of great service. But I presume 
also that in the opinion of us all the present relation of our game ot 
football is not what we desire. 

The general complaint in the public press is of the roughness and 
dangerous character of the game. ^ ^ ^ j think that we who 
administer universities will agree that there are other objections to 
the present mode of carrying on the game quite as serious as the 
roughness in the play. Let us notice some of them. 

1. Under the actual organization the absorbing interest and excite- 
ment of the students — not to speak of the public — in the preparation 
for the intercollegiate games make a damaging invasion into the 
proper work of the university for the first ten or twelve weeks of 
the academic year. This is true not of the players alone, but of the 
main body of students, who think and talk of little else but the 
game. * * * 

2. The present conditions constantly hold before the students and 
before the world false ideals of college life. Not only in the college 
journals, but in the newspaper press of the whole country the stu- 
dents who by daily descriptions and by portraits are held up as the 
great men of the university are the men of brawn rather than the 
men of brains. Their slight ailments are chronicled with as much 
promptness as are those of a King in his Court Gazette. Their names 
are daily carried by the Associated Press from ocean to ocean. Not 
only undergraduates but school boys are filled with aspirations to 
follow in the footsteps, not of the best scholars, but of the best 
players. 



President Nicholas Murray Butler. 



25 



3. The university is necessarily viewed in a wrong perspective. It 
is looked on as training men for a public spectacle, to which people 
come by thousands, instead of quietly training men for useful, intel- 
lectual, and moral service, while securing ample opportunity for rea- 
sonable athletic sports. Indeed the intellectual trainers are made to 
appear as of small consequence compared with the football 
coach. * * * 

4. The expenditure of money in the preparation for the game is out 
of all proportion to what a rational provision for exercise and games 
for students ought to call for. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE ANNUAL REPORT OF NICHOLAS MUR- 
RAY BUTLER, PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 
NOVEMBER 5, 1906. 

During the autumn of 1905 various occurrences took place which 
served to focus public attention upon the game of football as it had 
come to be played by American college students. . . . 

While to many the game had become intensely uninteresting, to 
others it represented the most interesting and important thing in the 
world. Immense crowds were attracted to witness the contests, and 
sums equal to the annual income of many an American college were 
received in gate money in a single day. Football, indeed, threatened 
to overshadow, and in some institutions did already overshadow, every 
other academic interest. The example of the colleges had speedily 
been followed by the secondary schools, the game was increasingly 
popular there, and not a few schoolmasters were beginning to com- 
plain of the evils which afflicted the colleges. ^'Appreciation of these 
facts had been growing in the public mind for some years past, and the 
events of the football season of 1905 brought matters to a crisis. Not 
only were participants in the contests often injured and sometimes 
killed, but the whole effect of the intense absorption in the game was 
antagonistic to the purposes and ideals of American colleges and uni- 
versities. Because the game was obviously popular and because par- 
ticipation in it was supposed to advertise an institution of learning and 
attract students, it was either applauded, or excuses were made for it, 
by many persons who should have known better. 

Not only did all the disadvantages above mentioned surround the 
game of football, but it had become a game in which the large majority 
of students could not participate. It required of most participants 
great weight and unusual physical strength; of others, swiftness of 
foot and highly trained powers of attack and defense. It was not a 
game that could be played in order to gain ordinary physical exercise. 
It required arduous training, almost complete absorption, and excep- 
tional physical powers. As a result, it had come to be at war vHth 
every sound principle of college sport or athletic exercise.^ 



*The Italics are mine. C. M. W. 



26 



Columbia Abolished American Football. 



The moral qualities which it was supposed to foster were not 
strongly in evidence. The most important football games had become 
in fact purely professional contests, for professionalism is not so much 
a thing of money as it is a thing of spirit and point of view. At 
times when students should themselves be taking physical exercise for 
their own good, they stood grouped by hundreds watching a contest 
between trained representatives of their own institution and another. 
That these contests were gladiatorial in character, the history of the 
last few years of the game plainly proves. . . . 

The most serious effects of intercollegiate football were not worked 
upon the participants, but upon the spectators and upon the general 
public. The participants were very often entirely unconscious of the 
criticism to which they exposed themselves, but there is not wanting 
evidence that the spectators, particularly the student spectators, were 
often swept into a vortex of hysteria and emotionalism which left its 
permanent mark upon their characters. . . . 

Immediately upon the close of the autumn season of 1905, the Com- 
mittee on Student Organizations, acting after consultation with the 
President and with his entire ^ipproval, announced that on December 
31 the permission to maintain a football association at Columbia Uni- 
versity would be revoked, and the existing association disbanded. 
The Committee on Student Organizations further expressed the opinion 
that the present game of football should be abolished, and they recom- 
mended to the University Council that the game be prohibited at 
Columbia University. The President at once addressed an open letter 
to the alumni and student members of the university, in explanation 
and support of the action that had been taken. , . . 

Public testimony should be borne to the admirable spirit in which 
the alumni and students received the action of the university 
authorities abolishing football. While fully aware of the dangers and 
faults of the game, very many alumni and students felt that in view of 
the opportunity it afforded for gathering together large bodies of 
graduates and undergraduates and of calling forth demonstrations of 
college loyalty and college spirit, it would be nothing short of a mis- 
fortune to abandon football. The university authorities, however, 
deeply conscious of their responsibility for the maintenance of the 
university ideals, could not share this view, although they appreciated 
fully the hold which it had among both graduates and undergraduates. 
Great as was the disappointment of those alumni and students most 
interested in football, when the action of the authorities was fully and 
frankly explained, they accepted it loyally, even though some remained 
unconvinced as to its necessity or wisdom. This of itself is a triumph 
of true university spirit that should not pass unnoticed. . . . 

It is hoped that it may soon be possible to make provision by which 
large numbers of students may be led to participate in outdoor sports, 
particularly in rowing, track athletics, cross-country running, baseball, 
tennis, lacrosse, and the so-called soccer form of football. The physical, 
mental and moral benefits resulting from such participation are well 



President David Starr Jordan. 



2R 



known, and it is an unfortunate result of the system now usually fol- 
lowed in American institutions of learning that participation in sport is 
confined to the very few and the highly skilled. 



FROM DAVID STARR JORDAN, PRESIDENT OF LELAND STAN- 
FORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY. 

There are good points in every game, but the game of football as 
now played has relatively no good points, while the drawbacks of every 
kind in a battle make this game the heaviest burden higher education 
has ever heen compelled to bear. In the Rugby* game the moral effect 
is wholly good. It is not possible for a player to try to injure one of 
the other side without being put out of the game. No part of the 
game depends on wearing out the other side. It is not so much the 
risk of life and limb, which is very great, in the American game, but 
the fact th*at the game itself is one in which injury to the men on the 
other side is an essential character, and this injury is planned before- 
hand by the professional coach. There is no excuse for any university 
maintaining a professional coach who is not an alumnus. 

The fight is on between university authorities and the mob spirit, led 
by clever men who make their living by leading it. 

In 1904, at the height of the football obsession in California, the 
presidents and committees on athletics of the two universities notified 
the students that no form of football having mass play would be again 
permitted. The students then adopted the Rugby game. The Rugby 
game, for well or ill, draws larger crowds, because it is more interest- 
ing. It has been tested for five seasons, and it is wholly satisfactory to 
all concerned. The game demands a much higher grade of skill and 
alertness. It is far more interesting to watch. It is interesting to 
the players. It is a sport and not a battle. As with football, so with 
Rugby, each player must know the game. It is played, not in armor, 
but in cotton kneebreeches, and there have been in five years no 
injuries of any consequence. The game is now played in the uni- 
versities and colleges of California and Nevada. It attracts (perhaps 
unfortunately) larger numbers of spectators than the old game ever did. 
It is now played in most of the leading high schools of California. 



*By the "Rugby" game, he means "Soccer Ball." C. M. W. 



EFFECTS OF FOOTBALL REFORM AT COLUMBIA. 
By a "Close Observer." 

It took a good deal more moral courage than is generally appreciated 
for the academic authorities of Columbia University to discontinue 



28 



Columbia Flourishes Without Football. 



the game of intercollegiate football as they did in 1905. In taking this 
step they knew perfectly well that they laid themselves open to bitter 
attack and criticism, as well as to serious misunderstanding of their 
motive and purpose on the part of students, alumni, and many out- 
siders of influence. 

So completely was the academic world under the influence of the 
football mania, that the devotees of football believed that they could 
break the will of any individual or body which attempted to stand in 
their way. The public, eager for large spectacular contests, spiced 
with the element of physical danger, did not want the thing stopped. 
Highly paid coaches and managers and the manufacturers of football 
supplies, who have pushed their business from the big universities to 
the small colleges, from the small colleges to the high schools, and 
from the high schools almost to the kindergarten, were banded like a 
well-organized trust against anything which might interfere with their 
sales and profits. 

The supporters of other academic sport defended football, often 
against their better judgment, because the enormous income from 
gate receipts, which it provided, saved them from the disagreeable 
necessity of paying themselves for the forms of sport which they pre- 
ferred, but which, like rowing, could produce no gate receipts at all, or, 
like basketball and baseball, only moderate receipts as compared with 
those of football. It was against this whole body of opinion, vested 
interests, and unacademic practices that Columbia University set 
itself. That the step it took would be unpopular in high degree was 
certain; that it was right, was equally certain. 

The cynical prediction was freely made that Columbia would have 
to back down from the position it took, because it could not stand the 
unpopularity and the criticism which the act called forth. The con- 
trary happened. The Columbia authorities stood their ground like men 
and patiently answered the attacks leveled against them by appeals to 
reason which were, however, but little heard. 

It is four years since football was abolished at Columbia, and there 
are now no undergraduates left there who have known or seen the 
demoralizing influence of intercollegiate football. It is the unanimous 
testimony of Columbia professors that the autumn weeks have now, 
for the first time, become quiet, orderly, and abundant in work. 
Previously serious academic work began after Thanksgiving. Football 
dominated everything until that day. The tone of the student-body 
has improved, and now on the university exercising ground. South 
Field, there may be seen every afternoon hundreds of young men 
actively engaged in sports, in games, and physical exercise, where, 
during the football period there were but twenty-two rushing and tear- 
ing at each other, while a few score or few hundred stood on the side- 
lines watching and cheering. 

Football makes athletics impossible. Athletics cannot flourish until 
football is gotten out of the way. The rational and regular participa- 
tion in outdoor sport by hundreds of students is an end devoutly to 



A Weak Defense of the Game. 



29 



be wished for. It cannot be obtained, however, so long as the body 
of the whole student interest is focused on the gladiatorial struggle 
between two trained bodies of combatants, leaving to the students as a 
whole nothing to do but to watch. The alternative is between the real 
and the vicarious. Football for the mass of American students is a 
vicarious participation in athletics. 

It is deplorable that Columbia's example has not been followed by 
other large institutions. President Eliot talked and thundered against 
football, but Harvard did not uphold him. Other college presidents 
have gone to the length of defending football as a moral agent. One 
hardly knows how to deal with men who take such an attitude. Colum- 
bia has gained for itself a proud pre-eminence by'an act of conspicuous 
moral courage, good sense, and high intelligence. — From the "Review 
of Reviews" of December, 1909, by permission. 



WHAT THE FRIENDS OF THE GAME 
SAY OF IT. 

In the light of the experience of Columbia, as shown 
above, the following pronouncement of the Athletic Com- 
mittee of Harvard, made up of persons selected largely 
from their interest in athletics, is extremely interesting.* 

"Intercollegiate athletics promote a general interest in athletic exer- 
cise; increase the number of men who take part in various forms of 
such exercise; furnish an active interest of a healthy sort to a number 
of men who but for them would be without any such interest; and are, 
on the whole, beneficial to the student body at large, as well as to the 
men who actually take part in them. Football, of which there has been 
more criticism than of any other branch of athletics, has been suffi- 
ciently improved, partly owing to the active efforts of the Athletic 
Committee, to justify its further continuance." 

Mr. Morefield Storey refused to sign the majority 
report which contained the above. 



From Andrew S. Deaper, Commissioner of Education 
for the State of New York, formerly President of the 
University of Illinois. 

♦Mr. R. B. Merriman says in "The Harvard Graduate Magazine" for 
June, 1907: "The faculty members of the Athletic Committee hitherto 
have been usually selected among that very small minority who, as 
undergraduates, either played on university teams or else took great 
interest in them." 



30 



President R. S. Woodicard. 



I quoted from Dr. Draper twice in my "Estimate"' on 
page one of this pampMet. In a letter (February 5, 
1910) he seems to have been convinced against his vrilL 
He says : 

"I have always been extremely friendly to the game of football 
because of the belief that there was a great deal in it of much value, 
and that, while there were dangers, and some still more unfortunate 
factors in it, they could be eliminated and the game saved. I am 
beginning to believe that the evils in it will never be eliminated, 
because the men who are most interested in it do not seriously care 
about their elimination. I am now clearly of the feeling that the game 
should be radically reconstructed or prohibited." 

In response to my request for views past and present, 
De. E. S. "Woodwaed, President of the Carnegie Institu- 
tion, Washington, D. C, formerly Professor in Columbia 
University, Xew York, writes : 

"I think you are not only entirely right in what you say, but that 
you have put the case very forcibly to people who are willing to take 
the trouble to think on the subject. 

"My views on this perennial topic of controversy were expressed at 
length seven years ago in my address on 'Education and the V^'orld's 
Work of Today,' read at a commencement at Rose Polytechnic Insti- 
tute, June 11, 1903, and published in Science, August 7, 1903. 

"It seems to me that all sensible men ought to be substantially agreed 
with regard to this important matter. Athletics as practiced ten years 
ago were very sadly demoralizing, as I had occasion to learn by reason 
of the fact that I had then two sons in college and a third in prepara- 
tion. 

"The changes since that time seem to have justified my position, 
since football [at Columbia] has been abolished, and it is no longer 
possible for men to be retained on the teams who do not intend to 
meet some academic requirements." 

I quote two paragraphs from the address referred to 
above : 

"A noisy minority of college men have succeeded, apparently, in 
convincing the public and to a large extent the college authorities, 
that one of the principal functions of an educational institution is the 
cultivation of muscle and the conduct of athletic sports. Along with 
the growth of this minority there has sprung up, also, a class of less 
strenuous men, who, taking advantage of the elective system, are pur- 
suing courses of aimless discontinuity involving a minimum of work 



Vieirs of an English CrUic 



31 



and a maximum of play. They toil not. except to avoid hard labor; 
neither do they spin, except yarns of small talk over their pipes and 
their bovrls. I need not explain to yon that these types of men are well 
knovrn in natural history." 

•■It is not so well knovrn, however, that these types of men — pros- 
pective bachelors of athletics and degree-himting dudes — are novr 
wielding an influence distinctly inimical to academic ideals and dis- 
tinctly debasing to academic morals. Pray do not misunderstand me. 
I am not opposed to physical culture and athletic sports. My protest 
is against athletics as they are now generally carried on. and especially 
against intercollegiate contests. As now practiced, athletics seem to 
me to defeat the object they are intended to attain. They cultivate 
almost exclusively the men v-ho are usually more in need of intel- 
lectual training, and they ignore almost completely the men who are 
physically defective.'" 



AS OTHERS SEE US. 

The following is taken from "Tlie By.stander. a 
splendidly illustrated English publication of sport, pas- 
times and travel. This article is headed "Chartered 
Hooliganism" : 

•'Of all the games played in the civilized world the most execrable 
is American football, nor is there anything more unintelligible than 
the fascination which this brutal and degrading pastime has for an 
intelligent nation like the Americans. An offshoot, presumably, of our 
own Rugby game in its earliest and crudest form, it still bears, out- 
wardly at any rate, some resemblance to it, But whereas we have in 
process of time improved our game by eliminating its more brutal 
fe?.:v.re;. the tendency in America has been all the other way. That 
it IS a scientific game nohody would be prepared to deny. To be 
proficient at it a team must practice assiduously with the aid of a 
professional coach, and one of its so-called beauties consists in the 
successful carrying out. after arduous training, of various concerted 
movements, the signal for which is given by code words, the sig- 
nificance of which is. of course, only known to the players on the side. 
This in itself is a form of mere trickery, which is repugnant to the 
ideas of the average sportsman, but apart from this, rough play, so far 
from being discouraged, is recognized as an essential feature of the 
game, and the costume of the players, with its pads and guards, may 
be likened to a suit of armor. Seldom does a match take place with- 
out some injuries of a more or less serious character taking place, 
and deliberate attempts on the part of the players to knock each other 



32 



Favors Soccer Ball. 



out are part of the day's work. Things have come to such a pass this 
year that, although the season is comparatively young, a dozen or more 
"football deaths" have already been recorded. I am glad to hear that, 
as the result of the death of one of its cadets, football at West Point 
Academy has been stopped, and I hope that this may prove the begin- 
ning of the end of a game which is a disgrace to modern civilization. 
Our own game, which is manly without being brutal, has made tre- 
mendous headway in the Colonies. Why not in America, too? 

"The Rugby (soccer ball) game is manly and interesting, without 
being brutal." 



CONTENTS. 

Page 

Introductory Note 3 

An Estimate, by Professor C. M. Woodward 5 

Views from Harvard — Harvard ''Advocate" 10 

W. T. Reed, Jr 10 

Faculty and Overseers 10 

Mr. A. C. Coolidge 10 

Mr. Morefield Storey , 11 

President Charles W. Eliot 11 

Col. J. S. Mosby 14 

Hon. J. W. Gleed 15 

Physical Injuries 17 

Dr. E. H. Nichols 17, 18 

The New York "Nation" 18 

Rev. Robert E. Speer 18 

Mr. Geo. F. Fiske 19 

Dr. Sargent, of Harvard , 19 

Mr. A. E. Kindervarter 19 

Mr. Wm. M. Butler 19 

Mr. Gilbert B. Morrison 20 

Dr. Albert Shaw 22 

President James B. Angell 24 

President Nicholas Murray Butler 25 

President David Starr Jordan 27 

A "Close Observer" . ' 27 

Athletic Committee of Harvard 29 

Ex-President Andrew S. Draper 29 

Mr. R. B. Merriam 29 

President R. S. Woodward 30 

From "The Bystander"-An Enghsh Publication 31 

"Soccer Ball" .20 (foot note), 27, 32 



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